Rather than talk about what you can expect from a 4E game, I'll just make a few suggestions as to how to present 4E in its best light.
What I found worked *really* well for our crowd was ...
a) Power Cards! Having individualized power cards with finalized calculated numbers (not simply formulae) as well as the rules summaries, winds up making the game go *so* much more smoothly. You never have to look up any rules, there is no page-flipping, and everything is pre-calculated speeding up all of the decisions.
b) Item Cards! Being able to hand the players a card with the item description, rules, etc., on it really ups the ante. Coming to the table with a stack of goodies to give out makes every gaming session feel like Christmas!
c) Gamer Mat -- This isn't for everybody, but our gang can't live without it now! Rather than using character sheets, I got my gamers to switch to gamer mats. We use poker chips for hit points, tokens for healing surges, and never, ever have to crack out a character sheet during a game. Record-keeping is simplified, the game speeds up, you can instantly glance at somebody's mat to see how wounded (or healthy) they are, and the entire process is streamlined. Between a Gamer mat with calculated modifiers on it, and a stack of Power Cards, my players never crack a book during a game. No more pencils, no more erasers, cleaner, neater, faster.
d) Map, miniatures, tokens, glass beads, printed tokens, etc. Since much of the game now centers on the battle grid, making the gaming grid just a smidge more attractive pays off in spades. Taking a little time to print off a token or two, or create specialized paper miniatures or templates, makes the game that much more fun. We cannibalized our copies of Descent to use their wonderful tokens.
After presenting 4E using this system, my gamers can't go back to "normal" RPG presentation.
